The
One Laptop folks had been encouraging me to make wikiCalc and then
SocialCalc run on their machines for a long time, but it wasn't until
now that I finally had the software in an architecture that was
appropriate for the OLPC and a machine of my own on which to test. (I
think that because the G1G1 campaign got a lot of these lovable
computers in the hands of developers a thousand new flowers are sure to
bloom...)

I
showed my testbed application to SJ Klein of the OLPC project and he
reacted favorably and encouraged me to continue. The executives at
Socialtext encouraged me to follow through and are supporting what I'm
doing.

I've
now packaged the code I have a little better and am making it available
for others to see. I'm calling the project "Sweet SocialCalc" because
when we are done I hope we will have native OLPC code driving this
(written in Python) so the JavaScript integrates with the OLPC user
interface environment (which is called Sugar, hence the word "sweet").
(See my video of a presentation about Sugar and OLPC from last June.)...

Currently, the XO laptop from OLPC does not have spreadsheet
software. The One Laptop Per Child developers did not think there was a
need for it when they designed the initial Sugar activities, and to an
extent, they are right.

Children do not need the ability to run macros on numeric data -
that's an adult request. But it is an opportunity for children and
adults to bond over basic math, as the Thailand pilot showed:

One
of the most engaging project that has involved both students and
parents is the family accounting initiative. For six years, many
families have recorded their income and expenses in order to better
manage their spendings. It was originally done using a simple balance
card written on paper.

Later, many had switched to Excel (via desktop PCs at the school's
computer lab and the help of their children). It was a case where the
benefits of technology was clear and well appreciated. Thus, having a
spreadsheet on the XO has been one of the most widely requested
features from the parents. Being able to do their accounting at home
through the help of their children is extremely attractive.

Dan is looking for feedback and volunteers to help advance the project.

January 26, 2007

Now
that wikiCalc has made the step to version 1.0 status, it is time to
look to the future. There are many important features to be added and
many people to bring into the project so that it can flourish. I intend
to continue devoting a lot of time to this product.

Here's what will happen next: As I wrote back last June, Socialtext
is going to integrate wikiCalc functionality into their wiki system and
provide hosting and support to those that want it. They are also
funding an open source project around the wikiCalc code so that I can
move the product forward as part of a community.

This
wikiCalc 1.0 code will form the base release to start what Socialtext
is calling the SocialCalc project. While the Software Garden release of
wikiCalc is covered under the GPL 2.0 license, Software Garden is the
author of the entire wikiCalc product and owner of the copyright. There
have been no "contributions". This will change with the SocialCalc
codebase. That code will be developed much more in the open and will
accept contributions from others (subject to my approval for now) who
will hold the copyright to their contributions. My development work on
new features will be going into SocialCalc, and Socialtext will be
providing a lot of developer time, too, so that is where the future
action will be. SocialCalc will be released under a Socialtext Public
License that, being based on the Mozilla Public License 1.1, may be
more appropriate for some companies who have issues with the GPL. (For
users that want code covered under the GPL, this wikiCalc version 1.0
will always be available under that license.) There will be more news
about SocialCalc at a later time.

For
me, this is a major milestone. It's been a long time since I've brought
a product all the way from conception to 1.0 release. I love
programming and I love developing products and the last year and a half
has been a treat. I look forward to sharing the next phase with others.

November 14, 2006

The screencast shows the latest version. (The last one was done in
June.) In addition to the normal run through of the product features
shown in the last screencast, this one has a short introduction that
positions the product and adds a few minutes of demonstrations of the
work flow, Live View functionality, embedding on other web pages, etc.
For example, it shows viewing a consolidated report, clicking on a link
to a divisional report, logging in to view that page, clicking "Edit
This Page" on that report, making a change, and then viewing the
updated consolidated values. It also shows using a normal web page with
a form to call up another page with an embedded spreadsheet that
includes calculations that are based on values provided by the form.

November 02, 2006

When we launched SocialPoint on Monday, I had a chance to sit down with Sam Ramji of Microsoft. A video of the conversation and Sam's thoughts are on Port 25.

Even more interesting to me given my role at Microsoft is that Socialtext has built a Sharepoint integration ("Socialpoint"). This gives Sharepoint users
access to a best-of-breed wiki and blogging engine while retaining
presence, Office integration, and a unified portal infrastructure. My
inner geek got going when Ross described the new protocol handler
they’ve built - "socialpoint:foo/bar" - for navigating within
Sharepoint across wikis. I think this is a good example of how
Microsoft platform software should be combined with open source
applications. We continue to invest in scaling the infrastructure, and
open it up to developers for innovative applications that can change as
often as customers require.

...wikiCalc has the potential to be an important product for the Open Source community as well as for IT in general. It is a complete server-based spreadsheet that runs on your own server, not only on a service provided by others. It keeps an audit trail that may be helpful to corporations that are concerned about such things (Sarbanes-Oxley?). It works like a wiki as part of a web of potentially editable pages in a collaborative environment. It is written in a popular scripting language (Perl) that makes it well suited for experimentation. It would be great to have the 1.0 release come out after a reasonable amount of
final testing.

Dan also advanced the formatting and publishing abilities of wikiCalc into something truly unique:

In a visual sense, I wanted the product to be able to produce real web pages that were at a professional enough level that corporations would feel comfortable using the product for internal use and perhaps even external use. That was a real challenge which I believe that I've met.

As an example, Dan replicated the IBM Financial Statements you would find in the investor relations section of their website. Only one key difference, the ability to let some people have the ability to edit this page.

Socialtext is working to integrate wikiCalc as SocialCalc into our Appliance, Hosted and Open Source distributions at the end of the year.

September 12, 2006

This morning Socialtext released SocialCalc Beta 1, the Commercial-Open Source version of wikiCalc. Dan Bricklin has made great progress with the wiki-based spreadsheet since we started working together. Download it now on SourceForge and let us know what you think.